Maybe we should make a new thread for this topic, because it's rather large and might be quite interesting to pursue further.
These examples were just a braindump, I didn't really think them through. I'll still try to defend them, of course
The problem might be that I blur the line between issues with the constitution and issues with American society; but because the first is shaped by the second, that should not be such a big problem.
Why would any other country have dissolved into a dictatorship? Because a strong executive leads to that sort of thing. In Weimar, we had an Ersatzkaiser - a president with great amounts of power. The resulting imbalance in the system was a major factor in the later... unpleasantries. And there's no denying that in the US the same thing might have happened: Just look at the Patriot Act or the story of J. Edgar Hoover. A country less firmly democratic, like any European one (except for Britain, maybe), would at some point have slipped.
Electing judges: A court decision should follow law and precedent, and nothing else. And elections are notoriously terrible at selecting the most competent person. An election of a judge can for example turn into a decision on abortion - something that should be settled through the legislative, but certainly not by influencing court decisions! I like my judges to be impartial. Selection through election makes that difficult, if not impossible.
Positive rights: Rights that do not defend against something. The right to bear arms is a positive right, freedom of speech is not. Just look at the first ~20 articels of the German constitution (link in the footnote on positive rights in my first post, btw). There's stuff in there you won't even begin to find in the US constitution, but which is pretty much vital in a modern state. The US has such laws, too, of course, but not in the constitution...
Right to bear arms: Not gonna touch that; but the American attitude to guns is one of the issues with American society that I was talking about above, I guess.
I do advocate the right to arm bears, though.Court decisions: Now this is interesting, and something I hadn't thought of before: The English-influenced law systems (common law, I think) rely very strongly on precedent; civil law systems do not. If we start regarding court decisions as part of the constitution, we get a whole different picture, of course: This whole discussion may just be a misunderstanding then. But precedent can be overturned...
Dysfunctionality: Obviously the US constitution still works. That doesn't mean it's not antiquated, though. Maybe antiquated is the wrong term; how about this: "The attitude to state and government expressed in the US constitution is not a productive one for a modern state."?
"Your friend's views are pretty much antithetical to the views our public school system holds & teaches." Anything else would have greatly surprised me
"'shame & guilt' crap is real over there'" We killed six million Jews, 28 million Soviets, five million Poles, and a bunch of other people too. It's not shame and guilt, and certainly not shame and guilt crap - it's a sense of what can happen. That's why you do. Not. Sing. The. First. Stanza. Except when calling someone a nazi*. And you especially don't do it at a friggin' party! Singing those lyrics, you are
literally advocating invading Poland - check a map for where the Memel is.
Germany has gone overboard with the no-nazi rules sometimes, but in this instance it's completely justified. It's probably the equivalent to singing the Confederate anthem on Martin Luther King day - you don't.
*Starting to sing that when I say that war with Russia might also have some desirable results would be permissible, for example. But even then you generally don't go past the first few words.
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Topic: UR's Post-USSR politics megathread (Read 311997 times)